Just watching a Morcecambe and Wise documentary on C5 of all places. Tears rolling down my face, just shown the Andre Previn sketch (which Eric and Ernie said they would never better) in full. Brilliant and suitably nostalgic. It’s a very warm documentary, worth watching
Got panned by fans and critics, missed it myself. I really like stuff like Inbetweeners and The Office, the comedy of cringeworthy embarrassment, but only in small doses. Meanwhile, the wife has something called The Greatest Dancer on. Like a dancing talent show. It seems that in this round the audience, that portion of the great British public who want to go to dancing talent shows, get to choose who stays and who goes. So a classically trained ballet dancer, who even as a non ballet fan, even I could see was clearly excellent and who the wife and the three judges really rated, was binned. But a weird bloke with hips wider than his shoulders doing dad dancing even though he obviously isn’t a dad, got through. No tap dancers yet, which is a shame. Can’t beat a good bit of tap. If an Irish dancing troop turn up I might have to smash the TV up.
Having had to suffer 'Strictly' for so long, I had to insist (successfully, surprisingly) that Greatest Dancer would be cruel and unusual punishment. However, this only meant that we had to switch to the The Voice. They just had a 35 year-old bloke on called something Donegan (turned out to be Lonnie's son) who was quite good, and Tom Jones turned to select him (you have to have seen the show to know what that means). Hard to know how contrived it was (probably very), but they wound up duetting on I'll Never Fall In Love Again, a song written for Tom Jones by this bloke's dad. Cue the tears - but then I'm such a mug for all this kind of stuff.
Both reasons why I'm sat in the kitchen with my headphones on! The Inbetweeners program was a bit ****, but the clips shown more than made up for it. Jimmy Carr was a poor choice of host, think Greg Davies would have been better suited for the role. Suppose it's all a matter of taste, although the main characters looked like they didn't actually want to be there! Found the "History of the Inbetweeners" funny, done in pan-faced manner by the excellent Neil Oliver whose archeological programmes I really enjoy (there's been a great series on BBC4 about the Celts, which culminated last night with an episode about Boudicca)
OK, we've just opened a bottle of not cheap red wine (a Kruger Family Pinotage) and my wife, on first sip, said 'Ooh it tastes like bacon'. Not a good thing for wine, but when I tasted it, I too got bacon - specifically smokey bacon crisps. What can this mean? Can any wine buffs help? It's actually quite nice despite the bacon thing. The cheese helps.
It was so distinctive that I felt the need to look up 'bacon taste in red wine' and found this...... It's the perfect gastronomic experience, isn't it? – something that tastes like delicious smoked pork belly without the artery-clogging saturated fat. To some people, it can sound absurd to insist that something made purely from grapes can taste like bacon, but the flavour nuance is considered by many wine lovers to be common in some red wines. Generally, I'd say it's not a classic note associated with cabernet sauvignon, but there are exceptions. My wild guess is that your wine, if it indeed was a cabernet, came from South Africa, where many reds, regardless of grape variety, can taste smoky. Pinotage, a signature South African grape, tends to be big on gamy, smoky flavour often described as bacon-like. Spot on. I feel like a connoisseur now.
Bit of a debate on the politics thread about the film versions of Alan Moore’s graphic novels. I was wondering about people’s expectations of ‘film of the book’ movies. Personally, if I have read a book and enjoyed it I tend to shy away from film versions. In general, if it’s a ‘good’ book, no way can you get the subtleties and depth into a two hour movie, and the ones that try to usually fail, you get the plot but not the meaning. However, ones which take some elements of the book and take it elsewhere can be great - I really enjoyed the Sean Connery film version of Name of the Rose, which concentrated on just one element of what is a very complicated philosophical book, the murder mystery bit. Probably perversely, a poor film of highly regarded books which I haven’t read will put me off reading them. No way will I ever read Cloud Atlas for example. Perhaps the new vogue for TV series might be a better way to do some books on screen. I understand that there is a series being made of Catch 22, which sounds interesting. The film of that was ok.
I really enjoyed Phillip Pullmans' "His Dark Materials" trilogy of books, and was astounded at how poor the adaptation of the first book, The Northern Lights was - they even renamed it The Golden Compass. Far too much material to fit into a film, especially the way they dumbed it down and treated it as some sort of teen-novel when there are some very deep subjects covered pertaining to the battle between science and religion and the existence of a God. I recently read that BBC America has gained the rights and plan to make them into three 6 or 8 episode series, so hopefully they'll do a good job.
I used to read and enjoy a lot of Stephen King books and have never seen a film that did any of them justice. One in particular which I thought could have made a very good film was The Running Man (actually a short story published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), but was turned into an awful film starring Arnold Scharzenegger. I believe Hunger Games, which I haven't read or seen, is a Running Man rip-off.
The TV (not sure if it's Netflix or Amazon) adaptation of American Gods is really good, and they are really going to be stretching it out, as it will be over three series for the one book
I’ve read that book and liked it a lot, seen bits of the TV programme and liked the look of that too (Ian McShane and Crispin Glover inspired casting). Near the end of the book there is a very long quasi crucifixion scene followed by a journey into the underworld. I’ll be fascinated to see how they do that on the telly.
Yes, good shout, I'd forgotten about that one. I think that might have been another Richard Bachman short story, and the film is probably an improvement.
In the God-awful category of film adaptations of novels has to go ‘Royal Flash’, Richard Lester’s ****ery of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman story. I love the Musketeer films that Lester did during the same era, but this fillum is simply dreadful.
